I sketched a horse rear-end and tried a couple of different fish heads. I ended up with a bluegill fish, which ended up having a serious case of resting bitch face! It was so fitting for this ugly creature! I enlarged my sketch and then traced it onto some white fabric:

Campohhip: drawing, ready to quilt!

Since this was a birthday gift for Sara who also has the hippocamp quilt I made, I tried to use the same Aurifil thread colors and layering so they would look like sibling quilts.

Campohhip: outlined with Aurifil 2540, Medium Lavender.

Again I used Aurifil Marrakesh (3817) to add color and definition to this weird creature:

Campohhip: quilted scales detail.

I used two layers of batting (cotton and wool) for stability and texture. The echo quilting is all Aurifil Creme de Menthe (4662).

Campohhip: quilted tail detail.

While making it I kept thinking of the scene in the beginning of Lilo and Stitch where they think Stitch in an abomination and decided to include this quote from the movie:

Campohhip: quote reads "As for that abomination, it is the flawed product of a deranged mind."

Sunday, October 2, 2016

A few months ago Afton at QuiltingMod issued a fabric challenge using Round Elements by Art Gallery Fabrics. Admittedly I'm not that excited by the fabrics, but told her to keep me as a backup should anyone need to drop out. Sure enough I was needed, and I decided to make some Curvy Clutches (free pattern!) as future teacher gifts.

Curvy Clutch #1.

I paired up two fabrics with various trims and zippers from my stash, and picked a coordinating Round Elements fabric for the lining (forgot to get a picture of the interiors! Darn).

Curvy Clutch #2

I took all the fabrics and materials with me on my sewing-beach vacation in August. It's a great travel project! Plus then I was able to do a beach photoshoot with them.

Curvy Clutch #3

For the record, you can make a curvy clutch out of a Fat Eighth of fabric! It was tight, but my FE were just big enough, hurray! Many thanks to Afton for supplying the fabrics for this challenge!

Curvy Clutch #4

Next I will get some Starbucks gift cards and other little goodies to put in the bags. What are you favorite things to give or receive as a teacher??

I made mine (the patchwork one) and one for Afton back in July, but had to keep them a secret until we were able to gift them. Later I helped Sara make one for Yvonne (you'll have to see pictures of it on Sara's IG or blog!). Sara generously provided all of the brand new Rifle Paper Co fabric line Les Fleurs, which have the prettiest selvages! I included them everywhere I could on both bags!

I free motion quilted both bags with 2 layers of batting, but ended up adding a layer of medium weight interfacing so the bag would have more shape and stability (ideally I would have used Annie's Soft and Stable, but I didn't have enough!).

Makers Tote: Les Fleurs City Maps fabric with FMQ outlining of all the fabric details and loop filler using a matching Aurifil thread.

Monday, September 12, 2016

This quilt started as one of those ideas that grips you and doesn't let go until you've turned it into reality. It started while I was working on the Fractal Friendship Star quilt. That quilt has the most basic of quilting--only in the ditch, so basically unnoticeable. It worked really well for that quilt, but my swap with Yvonne was for straight line quilting, which is definitely a different aesthetic than stitch in the ditch! So I thought, okay I'll make her a second quilt and go crazy with straight line quilting! Then I broke more rules by doing the straight lines around intricate free motion quilting, haha. I'm a quilting rebel!

Ballena Muerta: I made a composite bowhead whale skeleton from 3 different pictures I found online. I probably spent an hour in front of a sunny window trying to get all the details traced onto that Kona Pepper. Cue the bright light induced headache.

I originally planned to make her a mermaid (I'm dying to make a mermaid!) but realized instead I should make her a creature she would like (and I'm not sure how she feels about mermaids, though I doubt it is negatively). Then I remembered her saying how much she loved whales! But I wanted it to be a part of my Quilted Mythological Creature Series, so set out to find some good whale myths to inspire the quilt. Somehow I came across the Japanese myth of the Bake-kujira (meaning whale ghost/creature) and it struck a chord, partly because we came across a whale bone sculpture while in Oregon together last month and I liked that tie-in.

Ballena Muerta: outline and skeleton quilted. And yes, that small floating bone is the whale's pelvis! I was debating about including the baleen at this point since it's made out of keratin and not bone.

I picked Kona Pepper so the whale would be a really dark blue (and let it be known that Kona Pepper IS a dark blue, not a dark grey!), with the intention of filling the background with ocean-y colored threads:

Ballena Muerta: quilt back. And how fitting is that dandelion in this photo?? I love it.

On the front of the quilt I used Aurifil Dark Navy so it would almost blend with the Kona Pepper--I wanted the quilting to add texture and a slight blue shine to the designs, but not really distract from the bones:

I had fun going through my Aurifil thread collection and picking threads for this quilt! I wanted most of the quilt to read as watery and the whale to be at least reminiscent of an actual bowhead whale in coloring.

Ballena Muerta: Aurifil threads used! Top left were used for the whale and bottom left for the background and whale outlines. I used the really dark grey in areas that I wanted the quilting to disappear, and black was used in the bobbin.

Friday, September 2, 2016

Back in March my friend Sara @BlueQuailStudio convinced me to drive to Phoenix to take Lizzy House's Meadow Quilt class. The class was okay, the road trip was lots of fun, but resulting quilt blocks were terrible and super frustrating (you can read my Meadow quilt template hack/fix here!). During the class Sara and I decided to make mini quilts from our practice blocks and then swap them. Well finally I decided it was time to turn my block into a mini quilt, but only after deciding to put it on the back so that the terrible waviness and inevitable wrinkles wouldn't show. I used my last piece of Alison Glass's Art Theory panel for the front.

Meadow quilt block mini quilt (back).

But guess what? All the wavy nature of the meadow block actually did quilt out and there isn't one wrinkle or pinch! But! The mini quilt was like a bowl, the corners curving up dramatically--so all that waviness just presented in a different way than I had expected. Nothing a little (okay, a lot) of steam and pressing couldn't fix, right?! Right. Oh but then...

Art Theory mini quilt: back detail and color bleed.

All the steaming made the colors from the Art Theory fabric on the front bleed through! I've never had that happen! If I wasn't already expecting the worst on the back I would have been pretty frustrated/disappointed/upset. As I was already resigned to the back being a hot mess it didn't really bother me, haha.

Enough about the issues, more with the pretty! I quilted this mini on my Hello Kitty Janome (a 3/4 sewing machine that can't drop the feed dogs) while on vacation last week! I just covered the feed dogs with my Supreme Slider (the queen sized worked great sideways) and fiddled with the tension and everything went really smoothly!

Art Theory mini quilt: quilting detail

Art Theory mini quilt: quilting detail.

Art Theory mini quilt: quilting detail

Why yes, there were a lot of thread color changes for this quilt! I used a full rainbow of Aurifil threads to match the colors on the Art Theory fabric. I am pleased to say that my Hello Kitty sewing machine (which I've named Tealk) loves just Aurifil threads as much as my larger Janome 6300.

Art Theory mini quilt: a rainbow of Aurifil threads used on this quilt.

For the bobbin thread I used Aurifil Done (2600), which blended well in some areas and added nice contrasting details in others!